Flexible hoses are widely utilized in countless applications. For instance, garden hoses are used for watering grass, trees, shrubs, flowers, vegetable plants, vines, and other types of vegetation. Garden hoses are also commonly used to supply water for cleaning houses, buildings, boats, equipment, vehicles, animals, and the like. Fluids, such as beverages, fuels, liquid chemicals, gases and air are also frequently delivered from one location to another through a flexible hose.
Flexible hoses have been manufactured for decades out of natural rubber, synthetic rubbers, thermoplastic elastomers, and plasticized thermoplastic materials. Conventional flexible hoses commonly have a layered construction that includes an inner tubular conduit, a spiraled, braided, or knitted reinforcement wrapped about the tubular conduit, and an outer cover.
Kinking is a problem that has been associated with flexible hoses since their commercialization and continues to be a problem today. Kinking is a phenomenon that may occur when the hose is doubled over or twisted. A consequence of kinking is that the flow of fluid through the hose can be either severely restricted or blocked. Kinking is a nuisance that causes the user to waste time unkinking the hose. Extreme kinking may occur when, for example, a newly purchased coiled garden hose is initially used. At the time of initial use, a coupling at one end of the hose is fastened to a faucet. The user typically grasps the opposite end of the hose and move away from the faucet without allowing the coiled hose to untwist. Kinking also occurs after the initial use as a consequence of routine movements by the user. Virtually everyone that has used in garden hose in cleaning or gardening has at one time or another been aggravated by a kinked hose.
When a hose kinks, the flow of fluid through the hose is blocked. The user must then attempt to remove the blockage by manual manipulation, such as by swinging the hose to relax the kink or approaching the kinked location and manually straightening the kink. A kink in a garden hose may require the user to return to the faucet, shut off the flow of water at the faucet to release the fluid pressure in the hose, and then manually unkink the hose. The user suffers further inconvenience because he or she must walk back, reestablish the flow of water through the hose, and then return to the opposite end of the hose to continue use. An even more acute problem arises when the user has already attached a large sprinkler device, such as an oscillating sprinkler to the end of the hose, and is forced to untwist the hose with the sprinkler attached.
The tendency of flexible hoses to kink may be at least partially alleviated by winding a helical wrap about the exterior of the inner tubular conduit. However, because of the choice of construction materials for the wrap and conduit, such kink resistant hoses achieve enhanced flexibility by sacrificing crush resistance to an externally applied force. When these reinforced hoses are deformed, for example by walking on or driving over them with a car, the helical wrap tends to permanently deform. The permanent deformation that results from being crushed restricts path for fluid to flow through the hose. Another approach for increasing the kink resistance of flexible hoses is to increase the wall thickness of the tubular conduit. However, increasing the wall thickness sacrifices hose flexibility such that these hoses are more cumbersome for a user to handle and manipulate. Increasing the wall thickness also makes the hose heavier and accordingly more difficult to move and use.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,658,208 discloses a flexible hose that is depicted as having kink, crush, and burst resistance. The flexible hose described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,658,208 is comprised of: a tubular member comprising a sidewall aligned along a longitudinal axis and a lumen radially inside said sidewall, said tubular member comprising an ethylene-octene interpolymer comprising polymerized units of ethylene and 1-octene, wherein the interpolymer is characterized by an average block index greater than zero and up to about 1.0 and a molecular weight distribution, Mw/Mn, greater than about 1.3 and a helical reinforcement strip at least partially embedded within said sidewall of said tubular member and helically wound with a pitch about said lumen of said tubular member, said reinforcement strip comprising a blend of polypropylene and an ethylene-butene interpolymer of ethylene and 1-butene, where the ethylene-butene interpolymer is characterized by an average block index greater than zero and up to about 1.0 and a molecular weight distribution, Mw/Mn, greater than about 1.3.
United States Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0071795 A1 also describes flexible hoses having a kink, crush, and burst resistant construction. A hose revealed by United States Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0071795 A1 is comprised of an inner tubular member; an outer tubular member; a yarn layer disposed between the inner and outer tubular members; and a plurality of reinforcement strips within the outer tubular member and helically wound with a pitch about the lumen of the tubular member, wherein the outer tubular member is composed of a first compound containing an olefin block copolymer and a styrene/ethylene-butylene/styrene-based thermoplastic elastomer, and the reinforcement strips are composed of a second compound containing a thermoplastic elastomer and a polypropylene homopolymer.